Читать книгу The Battle of The Press - Theophila Carlile Campbell - Страница 7

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"Yet shall remembrance from oblivion's veil,

Relieve your scene and sigh with grief sincere,

And soft compassion at your tragic tale,

In silent tribute pay her kindred tear."

We who rejoice in a Free Press to-day can hardly realise the condition of the Press in Europe at the opening of the nineteenth century. In England, eighty years ago, he who dared to express opinions in opposition to the Established Church, or in any way offensive to the government of the day, rendered himself liable to heavy fines and severe imprisonment. The following extract will show better, perhaps, than anything else what a deplorable state the Press was in when Richard Carlile entered upon his great fight, and the obstacles he had to encounter:—

"It is difficult to imagine a more degraded and dangerous position than that in which every political writer was placed in the year 1817. In the first place, he was subject by a Secretary of State's warrant to be imprisoned upon suspicion under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Secondly he was open to an ex-officio information under which he would be compelled to find bail or be imprisoned. The power of ex-officio information had been extended so as to compel bail by an Act of 1808; but from 1808 to 1811, during which three years forty such informations were laid, only one person was held to bail."*

* Larned's "Encyclopaedia and Topical History".

This was the time and this the state of affairs which greeted Carlile when he first entered into public life. He did not then see a man who had the courage to stand up boldly against such formidable odds. He, therefore, resolved to raise the standard of an absolutely Free Press, and be himself the bearer of the colors. This he knew involved possibilities of imprisonment, of exile, losses and suffering. He believed that his example would rally the weak and scattered forces of the writers of the day, and rouse the people to a sense of their degradation and dangerous condition, and to a recognition of the oppressive character of the rulers then in power.

In gathering materials for the life of Richard Carlile, I have drawn freely from his own publications, and also from a mass of correspondence extending over many years of his life. These letters were in most cases strictly private, yet every one of them would bear publication as far as Carlile is concerned. He, however, was the recipient of many confidences on the part of his friends—their sorrows were always his by sympathy. The claims of friendship, long since past, still hold good, though he would profit and not lose by the publication of the whole correspondence.

Chief amongst his publications were the fourteen volumes of the Republican, a weekly paper of thirty-two pages, ten or more volumes of which were edited in Dorchester Gaol. The very name of Republican in those days was a challenge to combat. This publication was the direct outcome of the Manchester massacre. The name had once before been adopted, but was withdrawn by Mr. Sherwin, the proprietor, as too dangerous.

After the rash and brutal conduct of the Government at Peter's Fields—or "Peterloo", as it came to be called—Carlile took up the paper, restored the name Republican, and, raising the war-cry of "a Free Press", kept it up through five of his six years of imprisonment in Dorchester Gaol and for one year after.

The horrors of the French Revolution, and the declaration of independence of the Colonial States of America, were yet too fresh in memory for the authorities of the time to see without alarm what seemed to be the flag of Republicanism flaunted in their very faces, and they sought to put it down at all hazards. The story of the battle between the authorities and Carlile will be found in the story of his life. It lasted for many years, but Carlile lived to come off a victor. The Government finally declared themselves defeated by him in his mode of moral warfare in the struggle for the freedom of the Press, pronouncing him invincible in the course he had taken.

It was said of the Republican that the only section of the British Press which could be said to be free at that time, was that which was issued from Dorchester Prison!

Before his six years of imprisonment had expired, Carlile was informed that it was Lord Castlereagh, the then Prime Minister, who was so determined to crush him, and also that it was his publication of the horrors of the Manchester massacre and his open letters to the King and Lord Sidmouth that gave the offence—Castlereagh himself having given the order for the massacre, and being solely responsible for it.

The charge of blasphemous libel was decided upon, after much consultation, as the strongest that could be brought to bear upon Carlile, as in that case the help and strength of the Church could be had, and the minds of the people could be turned from the contemplation of that bloody affair at Manchester. So our hero was marked for slaughter. The fiat had gone forth! Judge, Attorney-General, and all the prosecutors were whipped into line and made to try this case and find this verdict, however reluctant they might have been, and were, to do so.

With this view of the case, which I believe to be the correct one, the reader will more readily comprehend how those stingingly sarcastic letters to Gifford must have stung and rankled in the wounds.

Carlile may be said to have travelled his native isle like the champion of old—always mounted on his charger of fearlessness, and armed cap-a-pie for the encounter of his enemies. They always knew where to find him, and he was always ready to do battle for the right and against wrong. He never skulked nor concealed himself, nor took ship to avoid his enemies. He wore his colors in his helmet in plain sight of all, with proud defiance, and if, as sometimes happened, he was for the time worsted in an encounter, he neither cringed nor fawned, nor asked for quarter. He nursed his wounds as best he might, and never wavered in his determination to fight for the right while life endured.

The names of the various publications brought out by Carlile indicated in a measure the attitude he assumed. They were the Republican, the Deist, the Moralist, the Lion, the Prompter, the Gauntlet, the Christian Warrior, the Phoenix, the Scourge, and the Church.

Carlile never changed the character of a paper to suit the times, but always stopped the old paper and started a new one whenever he felt that the old one had accomplished the purpose for which he had started it.

In the matter of praise and blame Carlile ran the whole gamut, from the highest crescendo of approval to the basso profundi of malediction. He was called "the intellectual Saviour" and the "moral regenerator of mankind" by his friends, and "the great Satan of the day" by his enemies; and he was equally unmoved by the extravagance of either. During the whole course of his public life he did not turn aside for one instant nor stray one foot from the path he had marked out for himself. Fines, confiscations, or imprisonments could not crush him, and we find him saying, on entering into the tenth year of imprisonment, that "he was now well seasoned for the fight"!

He was warned by a faithful friend, previous to his sentence of imprisonment in 1830, that a measure had been discussed in the private councils of the Government, that the old law of flogging should be revived for his suppression, fines, confiscations, and imprisonments having failed to accomplish it. On hearing that the measure had been abandoned and a further imprisonment agreed upon, he "confessed to having drawn a long breath ". He never despaired, however, but was always confident of success, and never had any misgiving as to the future outcome of the fight.

And now I come to the close of this introductory chapter, and ask the readers of the present day to turn over the pages of the life of this much misrepresented man.

If to map out a plan of duty in youth and to follow it out till death through good and evil report, unspoiled by praise, unmoved by assaults the most ferocious; if to endure losses and the sacrifice of all domestic comforts and apparently unending imprisonment, and never to lose courage or be cast down in spirit; if to bear every evil unshaken and to keep his eyes steadily fixed on the object to be attained, though that object be no selfish one, but for the benefit of down-trodden humanity; if to stand at the helm through storm and fire, through adverse winds and tides, and at last to pilot the barque of a noble purpose to a sure haven—if this be evidence of greatness of mind, then he was great, for this he did!

He was great, too, in his ability to lead the people. He was a great educator of the people; he taught them to think for themselves. He started hundreds of young men, taught them to read, to think, to compare. No man ever did more of this work than Carlile. He taught the working men to be cleanly in their habits, to shun liquor and tobacco, and to dress well.

All his followers, at least all the young men he acknowledged as such, were models of intelligence and upright conduct, and all who survived him did credit to his teaching, and lent valuable aid in the struggle for a Free Press. And so he kept on till death came, all too soon; but not till he had seen above him the bow of promise on the clouds of ignorance, which promised for all a brighter and more beautiful day—the day of mental freedom.

"Who noble deeds by noble means obtains,

Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains,

Like good Aurelius let him reign

Or die like Socrates,

That man is great indeed!"—Pope.